


The White Wolf

by rcgers



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky & Okoye are Unlikely Friends, Bucky Barnes Recovering, M/M, Protective Steve Rogers, Shuri is a genius
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 20:23:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13818759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rcgers/pseuds/rcgers
Summary: "You are more valuable than you realize, Sergeant Barnes. I know we can find a place for you to thrive in Wakanda. Trust me."





	The White Wolf

**Author's Note:**

> this story will take place in Wakanda, after Black Panther. i have taken some quotes from the Avengers - Infinity War Prelude #1 comic to set the scene :)
> 
> if you think this will have a bucky/shuri relationship, all you will be getting is a healthy FRIENDSHIP, so think again
> 
> other than that, please enjoy this super short prologue :)

Shuri sits at a table in her lab, tinkering with a new upgrade for the Black Panther suit. EDM is playing loudly through the speakers and the room is buzzing with energy, but none of it is coming from Shuri. She glances at the kimoyo beads wrapped around her wrist with impatience--still no sign of T’Challa or Okoye. She taps her foot to the beat of the music as she tries to busy herself with her new designs.

She stands suddenly, hell-bent on doing something that will take her mind off of how worried she is about her family that refuses to activate the communications systems she designed for this type of mission. Shuri spends the next few minutes collecting some data from a monitor near her workspace. After she has everything she needs, she leaves her lab and requests transport to the medical facility where her latest challenge is being held.

 

The facility is as pristine as Shuri left it a week before. The medical staff greet her with the traditional Wakandan greeting and then update her on their progress. On the way to where their guest is being held, Shuri reads over his charts and wracks her brain on how to help him in ways American doctors never could.

They come upon the room where the cryo-chamber is located and Shuri enters first. There is a doctor standing by a monitor across the room, scanning the patient’s brain activity and monitoring his vitals. Shuri’s eyes drift to the chamber and she takes a deep breath before walking to stand directly in front of the man enclosed in the glass.

“Sergeant Barnes,” she says to the unconscious face. “Let’s see how we can fix your head.”

 

Shuri spends the next several days creating an algorithm to erase the influence of Sergeant Barnes’ trigger words. She uses medicinal kimoyo beads and bio-scanners to map his neurological activity and create a digital representation of his brain that highlights the regions most severely damaged by electromagnetic shock. After several weeks of mapping his brain to pinpoint where the influence of the Nazi organization ends and Sergeant Barnes begins, Shuri discovers a drug that’s being used in America to repair damaged organs in terminal patients; she gets her hands on enough to heal a hundred organs and refines it to optimize its efficiency. After a couple dozen simulations and modifications to perfect the healing capabilities of the synthetic drug, she injects a mixture of vibranium and her modified strand of SW033291* into his bloodstream to rebuild the damaged tissue of his medial temporal lobe and hippocampus. 

T’Challa visits her periodically. The day she decides to inject her patient with vibranium, she calls her brother to see her progress. An hour after she contacts him, he walks into her lab and greets her fondly, a soft smile on his worn-down face. “You say you’ve made a breakthrough?”

Shuri smirks and leads him to the man frozen in cryo-sleep stasis. “I said you needed to come and see what I’ve been doing so I can impress you with my genius.”

The new king chuckles. “You tell me what it is you’ve done and I’ll decide whether or not to clap for you.”

“Fine. but for you to fully appreciate, you should understand how hard it is to do what you asked of me. It’s not as simple as erasing mental programming outright. There’s no delete button here. And a majority of his programming is linked to trigger words. The last thing we want to do is remove all of who Sergeant Barnes is—his loves, his hates, his quirks, his whole personality—when trying to destroy what HYDRA made him to be.

“The hardest part is rooting out the extent of his memories that have the greatest amount of control over his physical actions. The ones that have been manipulated due to their deep emotional trauma… of which there are very, very many.”

The king turns to face his sister. “I’m waiting for the part where you tell me the good news.”

Shuri smiles. “I’ve been running an algorithm that will be able to flush the influence of the trigger words out while retaining the core context of those original memories. Essentially, I should be able to reboot him. But more exciting is that this algorithm should provide even greater advancements in Wakanda’s own artificial intelligence applications in the near future.”

“It sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into telling me how smart you are,” T’Challa teases. “But I believe you are right.”

“It’s so much simpler than that silly shortcut Tony Stark took in creating Ultron. Of course, that’s ‘cause I’m smarter than him.” Shuri’s eyes drift to Sergeant Barnes sleeping peacefully in the cryochamber. “At the very least, for now, Sergeant Barnes can dream in peace.”

Her brother turns to walk out. “And I’m sure that would make Steve Rogers happy enough to hear, wherever he is now.”

**Author's Note:**

> SW033291 is a drug that acts as a vitamin for tissue stem cells, stimulating their ability to repair tissues more quickly
> 
> source: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/06/150611144438.htm


End file.
